The Czarina.

Hastings Standard, Issue 215, 8 January 1897, Page 4

The Czarina.

The Empress of Russia, as she appears in some of her recent photographs, is a women of singular beauty; in others, again her face is almost homely, and to those who have never seen her it must be difficult to know what she is really like. A few springs ago (says a writer in the At Home) an English friend of mine was staying in Florence, and as she was walking through one of the principal streets a

carriage dashed past her, its occupants an elderly lady and a young fair girl. Something in the face and bearing of the girl arrested her. "Did you see her?" she asked of me. "Now, that girl ought to have been born a Princess!" "Well," I replied, "that is Princess Alix of Hesse! So you see she has fulfilled her mission." The Empress of Russia, then, is every inch an Empress. Exquisitely fair and distin-guished-looking. she resembles, in quite a startling way to those who can remember him, the late Prince Consort. If a fault can be found with her face, it is that the nose is just a little too long, otherwise nothing can be more perfect. Sweet, too, is her expression ; if amused, her eyes light up with the brightest of smiles ; or touched, they shine with a'tender glow. No child, indeed, could have been more carefully brought up than the little " Alicky" by her mother, the late Princess Alice, that gentle creature to whom the Prince of Wales has so often alluded as " Alice, the best of us all!" As a child, the Empress was gay and playful, but as years went by, and her sisters left home to marry, she became a trifle lonely and pensive. The death of her father was of course a great grief, and from that time forward her brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, became almost her sole companion. The two were devoted; but brothers, we all know, will fall in love with other men's sisters, and the Grand Duke was no exception to the rule. It may have been rather trying—although Princess Alix and the fiancee, Princess Melita of Coburg, were ever the best of friends--for her to give over her place at the Darmstadt Court to her cousin. Fortunately, just at the right moment you remember it was .at the Coburg wedding—the Russian Prince laid the hand and heart which so long had been hers at Princess Alix's feet. No one, I believe, was more delighted at the prospect of the union than our Queen herself, and the German Emperor, who has won for himself the reputation of an inveterate match-maker, was jubilant that the future Emperor of all the Russias should become affianced to a Princess born and bred on German soil. To ascend the throne as Empress of Russia at so early an age was something in the nature of a romance. Very modestly, but very regally, did Princess Alix bear herself. The quiet, | dreamy, I might add sentimental, girl I was suddenly transformed into a woman resolute, for all her gentleless. Those who have been constantly in the entourage of the Empress describe the change in her as something very remarkable. Nothing can surpass the dignity and ease of her manner in whatever emergency she may find herself placed. No more loving husband and wife could, I believe, be found in any home in the country.